Conclusion

The biggest mistake I see companies make is mess up their URL structure. If you are strapped for time, focus on fixing that first. It’s one of the hardest things to fix, but it will pay off in the long run.

The rest can be fixed over time, and it isn’t as complicated. For example, improving load time can be done with the help of Google PageSpeed.

So, how else can you ensure your pages are optimized for search engines?

P.S. If you need help with your on page SEO and structuring your site, click here.

Comments

Great visual Neil! It’s always great to go back to the basics just to ensure that you’ve nailed them down correctly. With so many different strategies to focus on, and the endless amount of information out there on the internet, we sometimes forget the basic, and often the most important strategies!

Over the last few years I think a major shift has happened away from the traditional elements that many people associate with SEO (titles, meta tags, keywords and even links) and the real focus is now on responsive design and proper social implementation.

Even though they may not seem directly related to SEO, the indirect benefits will far outweigh the direct benefits of many standard SEO practices.

From my experience it isn’t really a module to speed up your website with 1 click. It just shows you how Google rates the speed of your page and what you can do to improve the speed on your page. Very valuable though.. you should definitely check it out. (comparable to YSlow from Yahoo, but still a tad different)

Thanks for ones marvelous posting! I seriously enjoyed reading it, you can be a great author. I will make certain to bookmark your blog and will eventually come back later on. I want to encourage that you continue your great work, have a nice day!|

One thing that most people seem to miss is site architecture and internal linking as I feel these are huge especially when the overall authority of your website increases over time, the more valuable your pages become, which makes your internal links a lot more valuable.

Very good article, Neil. All of these points come after you have a website creation program or programmer.

Can you do an article in the future on a few of the best website creation software programs that are relatively easy for a non-techie to buy and use to create a website, without needing to learn html much or not at all?

Great infographic, Neil. Only thing I’m not doing there is optimizing image file names and since I do a lot of news, I try to stay around the 300-word range. Nice to see everything else squared away – that infographic is a great quick reference tool.

Excellent advice as always. Loving each tip and hey, at least I’m following a handful.

I guess with the permalink you’re using for this post, you’re targeting a nice longtail phrase?

I figured that making a few small changes which take seconds to minutes increases my chances of ranking. That’s good enough for me. Me like some targeted traffic 🙂 But many bloggers are ignorant – like I was for years – or have a short term approach to driving traffic – like I had, for years – and miss the boat.

I am slowly leaving my “SEO loathing” phase to see the SEO light. You’ve helped awaken me. Thanks for being the high priest/evangelist of SEO for me, Neil lol!

Little off-topic.But I have been your forum here.But certainly it has gone(You explained the reason though)You are just like a hero for me.Specially with the crowd of foreigners like Matt Cutts and certain others I really found someone from us to do something what people listen.I am not any expert in this seo field.But if you mention a place where people like us can discuss you things like a forum or such it will be great.My apologies if I tell anything wrong.

I am looking for increasing my website PR. So by surfing online I got this best article on structuring a perfect seo optimized page. First of all thank you for your best article. This helped me to understand about some seo works. You can use this recommended essay writing services for more understanding some online services. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20141125204455AAyC3EU

Sorry I am a bit late to the party, however I was also a bit confused by the suggestion to “wrap your title in an H1 tag” which is not really possible, as far as I know. Perhaps the idea is to use the same title tag “target keywords” in the H1 tag?

Hi Neil, I am still using no follows on all out-bound links. Should I stop doing this now? If so, should I go back and delete all of them (except sponsored posts)? This seems to be one of the issues that might be affecting my site’s SEO ranking. Thanks!

Great as always Neil. I always love to call you Nail! Because you always Nail SEO strategies on the head, even the fontanelle. None else rock like you do. You always makes my SEO instinct great and I wish I steal a part of you.

Thanks for the article, its very easy to get carried away when it comes to SEO and every now and then it’s good to focus on the what is important again! So often you see messed up URL structures, and it so frustrating because it is one of the most important aspects of SEO! I completely agree with Neil, get your URL sorted first and you will reap the benefits in the future!

Thanks for such informative info graphic.You explain almost every ranking factor in your picture. If you are concerned about your on page SEO you should start adding the proper schema markup to your individual pages and posts.

Great article, Neil! Loved the infographic on SEO, it provided a lot of great and useful information I will use in the future! I noticed that you mentioned Google’s LSI for keywords – we wrote a blog recently on 3 more keyword development tools that you may find helpful. Feel free to check it out:

Remember when optimizing your content on your landing pages for the search engines we should not overload our landing page with our keywords, we should keep in mind our targeted audience and the density of keywords on a page.

You really make it appear so easy together with your presentation however I
find this matter to be really something that I believe I’d never understand.
It kind of feels too complex and extremely wide for me.
I’m looking forward in your subsequent publish, I will attempt to get the cling of
it!

Thanks for generating this awesome infographic. These are always great ways to share with marketers and content managers and SEOs information in a concise and easy to digest manner.

Just wanted to address the Google Page Speed stuff in depth.

First, as you know, Page Speed Optimization is a combination of factors. Obtaining a high score can be difficult without the help of a developer – especially if you need to fix issues with render-blocking javascript and how javascript and CSS loads, which in most cases should be below the fold, but sometimes you just have to leave it alone. Making that determination and fixing render-blocking javascript is more complicated than doing something like compressing images.

This plugin will help you fix those issues, as well as mini javascript, CSS, and HTML.

I mentioned compressing images. JetPack by Automattic (the Pro services arm of WordPress) offers Photon for images. The service is activated by downloading and installing JetPack, then activating Photon inside of JetPack’s Settings admin area.

WP-SmushIt is also a popular plugin to compress images when they are uploading by sending them through a cloud based compression system. However, Yahoo! stopped supporting the SmushIt API. However, WPMUDEV, have revised WP-SmushIt and now offer it again – maybe as a paid plugin (not 100% sure).

Another tool with images is to use sprites instead of individual images in your design. That way, only one image loads and pulls the sprite from the single master sprint and doesn’t have to load individual images for everything small on the page.

Caching and hosting are also issues related to page speed. I’d say we’ve now graduated to managed WordPress hosting with companies like Flywheel, A Small Orange, and WP Engine. These companies are now offering VPS level hosting with object caching backed by NGINX, which is said to be a faster web server than Apache (that’s a debate I’m not qualified to have, but that’s what I hear). For all those small businesses still relying on cheap shared hosting with GoDaddy, HostGator, and other mainstream hosting companies, not only are you leaving yourself vulnerable to security issues in shared hosting environments, but it’s so cheap you have others-including spammers-hogging system resources in shared hosting environments, which can ultimately slow down your site. There seems to be some new tech out there for shared, which I haven’t yet tried, but I’d say it’s better to just take the next step and get the best support, hosting, backups, caching, and a CDN with these higher tier services.

If you’re ambitious enough and want to try to manage this on your own, then head over to Linode and set up an account. It’s what many of the other hosting companies use, but at the next tier up. You should have some sys admin skills, but you can then install and configure TotalCache or SuperCache (both not allowed on managed hosting services, because they already employ caching), you can install and configure NGINX to your liking, you can optimize php, and do other tweaks that will enhance your page load speed. You can also connect up Amazon Cloudfront as your CNS. But, it’s not for the feint of heart. It can take many hours to get the optimal configuration.

In terms of on-site SEO, I always employ All in One SEO Pack Pro to optimize my SEO and now optimize my social media as well. I know the plugin is light and loads fast, so it doesn’t affect site speed.

I really like the infographic. Some additional thoughts/questions:
– Is this graphic still valid (it’s 2016 btw)
– What about INTERNAL LINKING? It is mentioned on some SEO blogs, that internal linking “is the blood that drives a website”. But it’s completely missing in the whole discussion …
– Downrank unimportant pages in the Google Search Console – what about that (important for large sites, like webshops)

What I actually believe is that, On-Page needs to be natural, i mean, we just need to maintain quality of an article by putting keyword, where it is needed like in Headings tags and by maintain good URL structure, we can easily get ranked for any keyword with some backlinks pointing.

I love how you use icons and images in your posts. It makes things so easy to understand! Is there anything new in 2016 that has changed? I have noticed Google being a little more feisty. I new to this SEO stuff and find it all so interesting. I’m very thankful for you the SEO tips and information that you share!

Excellent work on infographics, Thanks for sharing the awesome article with us, especially this will be very handy guide for newbie’s like me. Just started hooking into your site to start my SEO learning. The way you explain the concept its awesome Neil.

This is incredible! It is so true that on page SEO is essential to get top in SERP and pleasure to see such an in-depth report on it! When optimizing your website to grow traffic, it helps to have an SEO checklist or plan to follow to get the most out of your experience and effort.

Fascinating stuff, I only stumble across you in the last couple of days. Keeping up the great content. I admire your way to describe the post, but one of the quick questions is what you would like to say about the keyword density and content length required in a post? Is keyword density also essential for SEO nowadays?

Great post, also love the visuals and design it makes it easier to understand everything. Learning is SEO takes time before you begin generating some results. There is nothing better than generating cold free traffic specially from google, By following your steps and updating your blog with valuable content, you will receive a good amount of organic traffic from search engines, Thanks for sharing, keep up the great content 🙂